Winter 2008 Advance Course Information

This information effective for winter 2008. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

World Literature

[LTWL- 117 ]

117 History and Memory in the New World

Instructor: Kirsten Silva Gruesz
Office: Humanities 1, Room 636
Hours: Wednesdays 10a.m.-12 noon; Thursdays 2p.m.-3:30p.m.
Phone: 459-2225(office); 459-1925 (FAX)
E-mail: ksgruesz@ucsc.edu
Web site: http://people.ucsc.edu/~ksgruesz
Mailing Address: Humanities Academic Services
                            1156 High Street
                            Santa Cruz, CA 95064

Course Description

This course juxtaposes narratives from the Americas that share a common obsession with history.  These works imaginatively return to traumatic scenes of the past which continue to haunt the present—such as the Spanish Conquest, the institution of race slavery, and the civil wars and territorial conflicts that marked the creation of modern nations in the Americas. Removed from such incidents by decades, if not centuries, writers confront the difficulty of gaps in the historical record by foregrounding the inadequacy of linguistic representation, creating formally innovative and challenging texts.

Our readings will pose a number of recurring critical questions: when is it appropriate (or even possible) to reconstruct the past in a non-factual way?  How do the workings of individual memory illuminate the process of collective remembering and forgetting? Do male and female writers approach this process of remembering differently? What happens to the nationalist orientation of literary traditions when a writer lays an imaginative claim upon the history of a nation not her own? Can one imagine an American cultural tradition that encompasses the entire hemisphere while acknowledging the imbalances of power within it? How have recent Latino/a writers, in particular,  worked toward this end?

Required Texts

In addition to the five novels listed below, there will also be required readings from a course packet that contains key Americanist manifestos (by writers such as Whitman, Martí, Walcott, and Anzaldúa) as well as theoretical and critical essays. Paperback copies have been ordered at the Literary Guillotine bookstore.

• Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! Vintage.
• Boullosa, Carmen. They’re Cows, We’re Pigs. Grove Press.
• Carpentier, Alejo. The Lost Steps, tr. de Onis. University of Minnesota Press.
• Alvarez, Julia. In the Name of Salomé. Plume. Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Hummingbird’s Daughter. Back Bay Books.

Assignments and Course Requirements

There is a demanding reading load for this small course, and attendance and participation are important components of the grade. Each member of the class will take a turn, in teams of two, in organizing discussion questions for our meetings. In addition, writing will be assigned as follows: a 5-page argumentative paper on EITHER Faulkner or Carpentier, with an informal 2-page reading log to be submitted on the other novel (due the 3rd and 5th week of the term); a 2-page reading log on Boullosa and Alvarez, due the 8th week of the term along with a proposal for a final paper topic; a 5-7 page argumentative paper on a topic of your choice, due during finals week.

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